I am going to address the emphasized section first. Ivy League means absolutely nothing. It means you were a legacy baby or went to the right ritzy high school for the most part. Most Ivy League colleges have been under heavy scrutiny lately for severe grade inflation. I would put the top 10% of students from any major college up against the top 10% in Ivy League school.

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

It didn’t seem like they did.

“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

“Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.

Just to clarify, the piece above is satire. There is no plan to impose bicycle tolls in Chicago.

It's not a horrible idea, actually. I mean, there is a fair argument to be made that cyclists do disproportionately benefit from lots of free infrastructure. We have the same here in NYC, where there are lots of dedicated bike lanes and free bike parking, and we even have bike stoplights on the major roads. We, cyclists, are not paying our fair share.

At one point, the author sarcastically asks "So when is the last time you saw a bicyclist pulled over by a cop and given a traffic ticket? Never? Never, you say? I thought so, Mr. Joe the Bike Guy." For me, it's been a while since I got a traffic ticket on a bike, but it has happened. Last one was down in Florida. It's not really reasonable to ask that question in a major urban center, since figuratively nobody gets traffic tickets downtown- only parking tickets. You just can't speed in gridlocked traffic, and the cops really don't care if you Block the Box.

I appreciate irony, but sadly, it's not really fair to place that sort of article in a respected newspaper. Hell, a lot of people mistake things printed in the Onion for real news...

64% of all families in the UK (20.3 million) receive government benefits. For 9.6 million families, benefits make up more than half of their income (30% of all families.) Of these, 5.3 million are pensioners (comparable to US Social Security), so subtracting those out, 4.3 million UK families (13.4% of all families) rely upon government benefits for more than 50% of their household income.

I sent a link to that story to Braineack this morning. There are a lot locals that are very annoyed over this whole incident. Here is another link with info about it with tons of comments from locals. I believe even his wife is posting responses.

I sent a link to that story to Braineack this morning. There are a lot locals that are very annoyed over this whole incident. Here is another link with info about it with tons of comments from locals. I believe even his wife is posting responses.

It's not a horrible idea, actually. I mean, there is a fair argument to be made that cyclists do disproportionately benefit from lots of free infrastructure. We have the same here in NYC, where there are lots of dedicated bike lanes and free bike parking, and we even have bike stoplights on the major roads. We, cyclists, are not paying our fair share.

Road wear and tear is a 4th order polynomial function of weight.

The MT crowd wearing their Pearl Izumi kits riding on their CAADs come in at a combined 200lbs between rider and bicycle. Civil engineers are basically taught that if there is any truck traffic on a road to ignore all passenger traffic.

When you really think about it, the trucking/transportation industry do disproportionately benefit from the road infrastructure that is being paid for mostly by people who aren't driving 18 wheelers.

The MT crowd wearing their Pearl Izumi kits riding on their CAADs come in at a combined 200lbs between rider and bicycle. Civil engineers are basically taught that if there is any truck traffic on a road to ignore all passenger traffic.

Bicycles may not cause wear and tear, but that doesn't mean that it costs nothing for the city to pave and mark bike lanes, install bike traffic lights, erect bike parking shelters, etc.

Now that I think about it, pedestrians are also not paying their fair share for all those miles of sidewalk and marked street-crossings...

Quote:

When you really think about it, the trucking/transportation industry do disproportionately benefit from the road infrastructure that is being paid for mostly by people who aren't driving 18 wheelers.

Yeah, but trucking is big business, and big business is always federally subsidized. #JasonC

What is really funny is I am currently less then a mile from the VA hospital that this happened at. I could walk over and try to get a picture of the sign. I am just to afraid of being tazed when I get out my phone to get the picture.

What is really funny is I am currently less then a mile from the VA hospital that this happened at. I could walk over and try to get a picture of the sign. I am just to afraid of being tazed when I get out my phone to get the picture.

"No Free Refill" signs are posted right on the ******* machine where you can't help but stare at it. The spin is that "but that's not fair, it's only .89cents...", which is merely to distract you from the actual point, which is that what he did was completely illegal and was in fact "stealing" in whatever form you want to call it.

The rest of the story is that there's no way the DOD runs the cafeteria in a huge building like that, so there's no way you could call the soda "gov't property". It's the "property" of whatever company has been contracted to run the chow line, which is probably a different company than provides meals to patients (because you gotta spread the wealth).

"What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.

Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it."